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Notes -
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these- what are your small-scale conspiracy theories? Not big stuff(eg jewlluminati secretly controls the world) not culture war par excellence- what small scale conspiracy theories do you hold to on a gut level?
A few of mine-
US schools routinely skip math prerequisites to cover up for poor instructional practices on an institutional basis, allowing a face saving way to have students repeat entire levels in college.
gluten is a fall guy for glyphosate in the wheat supply chain. Damaged wheat crops are harvested with roundup to kill the plant, thus drying out the wheat, and TPTB would rather blame gluten than roundup.
I'm trying to think of new ones I haven't done before.
-- The Hur report by the special counsel who described Biden presenting as "as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" was actually just using bitchy language to get back at Biden for using standard answers. The classic way to respond to a politically motivated investigation deposition is to say "I don't recall." "I can't confirm that, I don't remember." "I don't know which day that was, or who was in the room, or what was said." Refuse to confirm anything, don't give them anything. This is a cliche. Biden did that, and then Hur turned around and used it against him passive aggressively. Biden couldn't exactly argue against it and say "No I can totally remember all that, I was LYING in the interview!" Which, fair play to Hur.
-- Musk's Twitter adventure all started with him intending to buy enough shares to get on the board and annoy people and pressure policy, but he quickly found himself in a mess because he purchased the shares without disclosing the purchase properly and under SEC investigation. Twitter corporate management, knowing that Musk wanted to use his power to oppose, harm, and maybe fire them, got in touch with Musk after his purchase telling him that he would have to act in the best interest of the company if he were on the board, essentially telling him all the things he couldn't say without being subject to a lawsuit for betraying the company, which were all things he was saying all the time constantly. Musk, between the SEC and the reality of getting a board seat, decided that the best way out was through and put in an offer for the whole company, figuring there was a good chance that in negotiations he could get out of the whole thing and maybe get Twitter to buy him out. Then the social media downturn hit, and Twitter wasn't going to let him out of it at all, and now he's stuck with it.
-- European universities that are haughty about open American legacy admits do the same thing, just in secret. Too many obvious examples of social immobility to otherwise explain. This isn't actually a bad policy, I think all affirmative action/DEI type stuff would be better if done in secret, but I roll my eyes when Brits lecture us about Legacy admissions in American universities. Ok, buddy, every old Oxbridge family just has superior genetics.
-- The entire car industry is secretly confused by the fact that the car is close to being a solved engineering problem. We've converged on solutions that answer basically every question that car companies competed on from 1980 to 2010. Essentially any small AWD CUV with a 2.0 liter turbo four is basically better than 90+% of cars made during that period on acceleration, handling, fuel economy, comfort, convenience, reliability. They all kind of look the same because they've converged on the optimal layout for most users and wind resistance. But nobody can admit this because the whole industry is based on planned obsolescence, brand loyalty and distinction, constant improvement. Car company execs are increasingly concerned with a future in which cars are a commodity product not purchased for any particular reason, but most often on price. Cars are going from deeply personal purchases, like homes, to impersonal and random purchases, like microwaves or non-stick pans or men's undershirts. The flailing around by so many brands that we see today reflects the reality, occasionally acknowledged by Akio Toyoda and Bob Lutz, that the car as we understood it is dead, because it has been perfected. The urge to electrification is both an effort to produce actually-noticeable improvements in acceleration and economy, but doomed to make the problem worse as electrification flattens all those properties.
-- The Serbia-USA game proved conclusively that the racial makeup of the NBA is mostly the result of racism. An all white team played the USA all star team to the fourth quarter, a USA team that didn't feature a single white player. There wasn't a single white American who was even particularly close! Yet even if we assume that Slavs are uniquely, among whites, good at basketball: the USA has vastly more Slavic citizens than Serbia. You have to play serious genetic gymnastics to come out with a logical genetic explanation for American slavs relative lack of talent compared to European slavs. We're missing out on a lot of talented players!
-- Celebrity romances aren't real or fake, they exist in a kind of human interaction that is completely foreign to non-celebrities, where the human and the economic mingle to a great degree.
This is a misunderstanding of how British college admissions work. Unlike in the US, in the UK you apply not only to a college, but to a degree. If you apply to an Oxford college for English, you are competing with the other people who applied to that Oxford college for english literature, and to some extent to other Oxford colleges for english literature (afaik at undergraduate level the college choice is a preference thing). You are not competing with people who applied to Oxford for physics, or math, or medicine.
The failsons and daughters of the upper classes simply know to apply to degrees that either cover subjects the plebs never even learn or develop an interest in (like classics), subjects that don’t lead to a good living (like drama, literature, and theology), subjects designed for rich estate-owning aristocrats and nobody else (land management and agricultural studies) or extremely obscure subjects that only a rich dilettante would care for (niche sub-categories of art like oriental/asian/middle eastern religious iconography or whatever, for example).
If someone says they went to Oxford or Cambridge, it’s not the same thing as saying they went to Harvard or Stanford. Getting into one of the least-subscribed courses at Oxbridge is easier than getting into many degrees at even third-tier British universities. If they did math or medicine it is fair to say they are probably pretty smart.
There are other explanations besides racism even if there is no ethnic difference in propensity to be skilled at basketball.
This is a stretch. I'm not aware of any Oxbridge course that will let you in without a minimum of AAA at A-level, while maths at UEA will consider you with ABB if they're the right subjects (and UEA isn't third-tier). You're right about medicine, but that's a bit of a special case.
‘The right subjects’ is doing a lot here. An A* in History is easier than a C in Further Math. And by third tier I meant still within the top grouping of UK universities, where Oxbridge is tier one, the next rung down is like Durham, tier 3 is like Bristol or Exeter or something.
A-level results in 2024:
Percentage of A* grades in History: 5.7%
Percentage of C grades (or above) in Further Maths: 89.8%
There could of course be a selection effect, whereby brighter students take FM than take History (which could explain why 28.7% of FM students get an A*). Still, I don't think that alone is enough to make the argument that History really is that much easier than FM, given the massive difference in grade attainment.
For what it's worth, Oxbridge students are generally very smart IME, regardless of what they study.
Fair.
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